RAID

Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on multiple hard disks at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware depending on the hard drives that are used - physical or logical ones, still what is common between them is the fact that they all perform as a single unit where info is kept. The top advantage of using a RAID is redundancy since the info on all of the drives will be identical at all times, so even if some drive fails for some reason, the information will still be present on the remaining drives. The overall performance is enhanced as well because the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There're different types of RAIDs where the functionality and fault tolerance may vary depending on the exact setup - whether info is written on all the drives real-time or it is written on one drive and afterwards mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

The disk drives that we employ for storage with our revolutionary cloud hosting platform are not the standard HDDs, but high-speed solid-state drives (SSD). They work in RAID-Z - a special setup intended for the ZFS file system which we work with. Any content that you upload to your shared website hosting account will be saved on multiple hard drives and at least 1 shall be used as a parity disk. This is a special drive where an additional bit is included to any content copied on it. In the event that a disk in the RAID stops working, it'll be replaced with no service interruptions and the data will be recovered on the new drive by recalculating its bits thanks to the data on the parity disk along with that on the other disks. This is done so as to guarantee the integrity of the data and together with the real-time checksum validation that the ZFS file system executes on all drives, you'll never need to worry about the loss of any information no matter what.

The data uploaded to any semi-dedicated server account is saved on SSD drives which function in RAID-Z. One of the drives in such a configuration is used for parity - whenever data is copied on it, an additional bit is added. If a disk happens to be flawed, it will be removed from the RAID without disturbing the work of the Internet sites as the data will load from the rest of the drives, and when a brand new drive is added, the data which will be duplicated on it will be a mix between the data on the parity disk and data stored on the other drives in the RAID. This is done so as to ensure that the data that is being cloned is accurate, so the moment the new drive is rebuilt, it can be incorporated into the RAID as a production one. This is an extra guarantee for the integrity of your information as the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform compares a special checksum of all the copies of your files on the different drives in order to avoid any possibility of silent data corruption.

All VPS server accounts which we offer are made on physical servers that use SSD drives functioning in RAID. At least one drive is used for parity - one additional bit is added to the data copied on it and in case a main disk fails, this bit makes it easier to recalculate the bits of the files on the failed hard disk so that the right information is restored on the new drive included in the RAID. Meanwhile, your sites will stay online because all the information will still load from at least 1 other drive. In the event that you add routine backups to your VPS package, a copy of the data will be saved on standard hard disks that also work in RAID because we would like to make certain that any website content you upload will be safe and sound all of the time. Working with multiple drives in RAID for all main and backup servers enables us to offer fast and reliable Internet hosting service.